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H1N1 Kills Man
TORONTO — Ontario health officials say the province's first fatal swine flu case had an unspecified chronic medical condition and died rapidly.
Cannada is second to Mexico with the number of cases
http://www.cp24.com/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20090525/090525_swineflu/20090525/?hub=CP24Home
Cannada is second to Mexico with the number of cases
http://www.cp24.com/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20090525/090525_swineflu/20090525/?hub=CP24Home
It's hardly news that medical professionals make mistakes--even dumb, deadly mistakes. What's shocking is how often it happens. Depending on which statistics you believe, the number of Americans killed by medical screw-ups is somewhere between 44,000 and 98,000 every year--the eighth leading cause of death even by the more conservative figure, ahead of car crashes, breast cancer and AIDS.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,35499,00.html
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,35499,00.html
That was from Dec 4, 1999. Just imagine how much worse it is now!
From the article:
"....Given the prevailing mood in Congress--which seems to be allergic to anything that expands the size and power of government--creating a new agency might be tough. But the Institute of Medicine has powerful logic on its side. Air travel in the U.S. is extraordinarily safe, thanks largely to the National Transportation Safety Board and the FAA...."
And here's a more recent study and indeed it does look worse.
"The HealthGrades study finds nearly double the number of deaths from medical errors found by the 1999 IOM report "To Err is Human," with an associated cost of more than $6 billion per year. Whereas the IOM study extrapolated national findings based on data from three states, and the Zhan and Miller study looked at 7.5 million patient records from 28 states over one year, HealthGrades looked at three years of Medicare data in all 50 states and D.C. This Medicare population represented approximately 45 percent of all hospital admissions (excluding obstetric patients) in the U.S. from 2000 to 2002.
"The HealthGrades study shows that the IOM report may have underestimated the number of deaths due to medical errors, and, moreover, that there is little evidence that patient safety has improved in the last five years," said Dr. Samantha Collier, HealthGrades' vice president of medical affairs. "The equivalent of 390 jumbo jets full of people are dying each year due to likely preventable, in-hospital medical errors, making this one of the leading killers in the U.S."
Mike
From the article:
"....Given the prevailing mood in Congress--which seems to be allergic to anything that expands the size and power of government--creating a new agency might be tough. But the Institute of Medicine has powerful logic on its side. Air travel in the U.S. is extraordinarily safe, thanks largely to the National Transportation Safety Board and the FAA...."
And here's a more recent study and indeed it does look worse.
"The HealthGrades study finds nearly double the number of deaths from medical errors found by the 1999 IOM report "To Err is Human," with an associated cost of more than $6 billion per year. Whereas the IOM study extrapolated national findings based on data from three states, and the Zhan and Miller study looked at 7.5 million patient records from 28 states over one year, HealthGrades looked at three years of Medicare data in all 50 states and D.C. This Medicare population represented approximately 45 percent of all hospital admissions (excluding obstetric patients) in the U.S. from 2000 to 2002.
"The HealthGrades study shows that the IOM report may have underestimated the number of deaths due to medical errors, and, moreover, that there is little evidence that patient safety has improved in the last five years," said Dr. Samantha Collier, HealthGrades' vice president of medical affairs. "The equivalent of 390 jumbo jets full of people are dying each year due to likely preventable, in-hospital medical errors, making this one of the leading killers in the U.S."
Mike
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